Hot Potato

The Charter Street Cemetery was reopened on Monday, November 4^th, as promised.  That’s good.  I am glad to see that; I was worried that once it was locked, it could remain so indefinitely.  But obviously I was wrong. 

People naturally discussed the situation on social media like facebook and instagram during the month of October.  Most of the comments I saw were supportive of the closing, saying it was the right thing to do to protect the cemetery, and that it was great that the city was stepping up to preserve our irreplaceable history, finally making it a priority.  It seems that, in general, this was viewed as a win for historic preservation. 

But I am not sure that’s really how the story goes.  I think a lot of well-meaning folks are seeing what they want to see here.  I, at least, am seeing a pretty different story.

I don’t have official stats in front of me, but I would estimate that the cemetery can easily get a thousand or more visitors on a busy day in October.  That’s a hell of a lot of foot traffic, especially in a space that’s not designed for it.  And while the vast majority of people are respectful, there are always a handful of people who misbehave.  Clearly, one great solution would be to staff the cemetery with volunteers, like a museum (because the cemetery is the functional equivalent of a museum).  And that’s what Destination Salem did for a couple of years, going a step further by limiting the number of people allowed into the cemetery at a time, capping it at 100. 

This worked well, as far as I could see.  It allowed people to visit the cemetery, and there were monitors on hand to keep an eye on things and tell people not to sit on headstones and whatever else.

But Destination Salem chose not to continue staffing the cemetery for 2019.  Talking with someone familiar with the situation, I was told that DS felt it was more than they could or should have to handle, and that it was really the city’s responsibility anyway.  And those are fair points. 

That put the ball back into the Department of Public Works’s court.  Now DPW has a lot on their plate throughout the year – filling potholes, fixing water-main breaks, snow plowing, and a ton of other things – and they are especially busy during October.  Over-busy.  You may have heard me say that visiting downtown on November First, you won’t find so much as a gum wrapper on the sidewalk.  And that’s thanks to the hard-working folks at the DPW. 

Taking care of cemeteries is part of DPW’s bailiwick, but in Hallowe’en season they have a lot of other stuff to do, so babysitting a centuries-old cemetery might not have been top priority (even though it is in the description of what the DPW does on their website).  But they did have options here.  The could have asked DS to lend them some volunteers (I heard that the info booth downtown had more people than they knew what to do with this year), they could have hired a police detail.  I am told that DS gave DPW plenty of notice, so they had time to figure something out.

Unfortunately, they took the easiest, laziest approach, which was locking the cemetery up and keeping people out (or at least trying to; I saw people sneaking in there during the month). 

I also need to point out that in my opinion, this process was not handled particularly transparently.  I attended the September meeting of the Cemetery Commission, where the closing of the cemetery was first brought before the commission.  One of the members asked the fellow from the DPW if the public guides in town knew about this proposal (many tours, including mine, include the cemetery), and he assured them that the guides were all well-informed.

“I’m a public guide,” I put my hand up.  “And I first heard about this yesterday.”

The two other guides in the room likewise stated that they had only heard about this in the last 24 hours.                  

The guy from the DPW offered apologies, saying that he could have sworn we all knew what was going on.  And none of us did. 

I’m skeptical.  The whole thing reminds me of the way the PEM handled the Phillips Library move – decide what you’re going to do, keep quiet about it, and by the time the public finds out, it’s too late to do anything else.  DPW apparently had months to figure out what to do here, and they waited until August.   Until pretty much the last minute.  One of the other guides at the meeting tells me she made numerous attempts at following up with the guy from DPW, and he never returned a single phone call or email.    

The Cemetery Commission also bears blame here. They voted to let it happen, and the only real discussion I heard, sitting in those meetings, was one commissioner explaining that she hated how Salem wasn’t the same as it had been when she was growing up.  Now it was all about tourism, and the wrong kind of tourism at that.  Destination Salem's Kate Fox, to her credit, pushed back against the anti-tourism grumbling.

I have a hard time seeing this as the city stepping up to preserve our sacred historical treasures.  I have a hard time seeing it as the city pushing back against the nonstop carnival that downtown becomes every October. 

I can’t help but see this as a failure.  The cemetery got tossed around like a hot potato, with departments crying, “Not IT!”  There was time to come up with a plan but in the end, the laziest choice was made – lock it up and walk away.  The cemetery wasn’t locked in the name of preservation.  It was locked because nobody could be bothered to do anything else

And I agree that downtown can be overwhelming in October.  Heck, I’m trying to steer a tour group through the thick of it.  Yes, commercialized tastelessness abounds, and I am the first to roll my eyes at the guy who wants a dollar for a picture of him putting a noose around your neck.  But the cemetery is full of genuine, first-hand history, and you can visit it without spending a dime.  If you hate the people in cheap costumes spending money in t-shirt shops and asking where the Hocus Pocus house is, I am not sure how you can support denying access to a site of real historical significance that can be visited and appreciated for free.          

The Charter Street Cemetery absolutely IS an important, irreplaceable treasure, and it deserved better.